Return the Gift

V2; 2005

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The first time I heard Gang of Four I had no idea who they were or why they were important. I was in high school, and I plucked Mall from a 99-cent bin because it was cheap and I wanted to hear something new. That's right, Mall. It was the worst possible intro to the band, the still-born result of Andy Gill and Jon King's first reunion under the name. I slogged through "Cadillac" and "F.M.U.S.A." a few times, shelved it, and forgot about the Gang of Four until I began to hear rumblings about their brilliance a couple of years later.

Since Mall belly-flopped into the cut-out racks in 1991 there have been two more revivals of the Gang of Four name. The first brought Gill & King together in 1995 for the passable Shrinkwrapped album; the most recent (and ongoing) reunion brought back the much-vaunted original lineup in full. Hugo Burnham and Dave Allen get less credit, but they were every bit as important to the band's airtight, brittle funk-punk as their mates, and having them back has turned the reunited band into a genuine powerhouse. Of course, it helps to have some good songs to play, and it's an understatement to say that the tracks from Entertainment! and Solid Gold have held up damn well over the decades. The rest of their catalog, recorded with varying line-ups, hasn't been so lucky, but they wisely steer clear of most of it in the set-lists of their marathon tours.

These reunion things can be dodgy propositions, but Gang of Four's live attack is as savage as ever, even without new songs to change things up. New songs from old acts tend to disappointing anyway-- just look at "Bam Thwok" or, more to the point, anything Gill and King did in the absence of Burnham and Allen. So the show is great, a slightly ironic nostalgia trip down Agit-pop Memory Lane and a chance for the original item to show all the worshipful kiddies who've taken their sound and run off with it how it's really done.

So the next logical step following the accolades is to release a live album documenting every ass-kicking highlight of the show, right? Well, not exactly. Gang of Four have instead hit the studio to capture the spirit of their live show, in the way they feel the old albums never did. It's the band's right to feel they're upgrading their old work to some standard they think it fell short of (Burnham apparently hated the drum sound on the original records), but last I checked, almost no one else was talking about room for improvement where "To Hell With Poverty" and "Damaged Goods" were concerned.

And as far as the material from the records made with the original line-up goes, there is no improvement. It sounds good, of course, simultaneously heavier and less abrasive than the old tracks, and certainly not worse, but it does feel a little pointless to take in these new studio versions when I've got the old ones sitting right there on a shelf. They revive two songs from their third album Songs of the Free, made after baked-goods mogul Sara Lee took over from Allen on the bass, and have vastly improved both of them. "I Love a Man in Uniform" and "We Live As We Dream, Alone," were both fantastic songs trapped in lead-assed funk bodies and hideous over-production; here they strip away the hired backing vocalists, kick up the tempos, and attack the songs with the righteous fury they deserve.

And speaking of righteous fury, it's time to hit that touchy Marxism/Capitalism subject, because there are reasons beyond the drum sound that the band chose to make this record. If you're among the naive and idealistic crowd who believe Gang of Four to be unassailable ideologues, champions of the proles, guys who'd never in a million years do anything just to make a buck, feel free to put your fingers in your ears and yell "la la la" for the rest of the paragraph. It began back in 1979, when the band signed a poor contract with EMI (a move that earned them the rather self-important scorn of erstwhile kindred spirits like Crass and the Ex). To date, Gang of Four still have unrecouped advances on their EMI catalog and have never seen a dime of royalty cash from sales. So in order to pre-empt an attempt by their old label to cash in on the reunion with a best-of compilation they'd see no money from, they made their own best-of album, recording new masters that they'll be able to earn royalties from. It's good business.

There's also a "bonus" disc of remixes that in all honesty ought to have been limited to an edition of zero. It's not all a horror show-- Ladytron and the Rakes both do nifty things with "Natural's Not in it" (the source tapes are the new recordings) and Karen O gets to live the dream on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs remix of "I Love a Man in Uniform", taking the chorus herself while her bandmates recontextualize the song's beat as straight disco. The rest? Let's just say that Hot Hot Heat's remix of "Damaged Goods" is the worst track I've heard all year, clipping the vocals and placing them awkwardly around a criminally naff beat. King's chopped voice sounds like it's begging for release from the fifth level of Hell. At least Go Home Productions had the good sense to realize that there's no way to improve on the bass and drum groove of "To Hell With Poverty" and just got rid of it entirely instead of trying to tweak it.

Amusement Parks on Fire come close to making a decent dubside for "Why Theory?" but ruin it with laser noises and gratuitous programming that feels placed in out of an obligation to fill sonic space. And that's ultimately what the whole release winds up doing, filling space. Whether or not Gang of Four write any new songs during this latest stint together is moot-- their legacy is already sealed. The old songs still sound great, while the new drum sound and wetter, louder production just sound modern; in an odd way it's already more dated than the sound of the original albums. Bottom line is that if you've got the old albums and you want to experience Gang of Four again, better to shell out for the actual show than for the disc that approximates it. Good on the band for getting in touch with their inner capitalists, but Return the Gift is ultimately superfluous.